Historical outcomes are rarely determined by some set of antecedent conditions. Instead, the outcome that occurs is the result of an extended series of events and conditions, each stage of which is subject to substantial contingency and conjunctures. This is most visible in the occurrence of large, dramatic events like stock market crashes, peasant uprisings, …
Problems with causal mechanisms
There are a couple of problems with the theory of causal mechanisms that will be difficult to address. Jim Mahoney raises a general concern in "Beyond Correlational Analysis" -- there is no consensus about how to define a mechanism. But there are more specific problems as well. One is the issue raised by Johannes Persson …
Polarization of American politics
If anything seems self-evident about recent American politics, it is the fact that our discourse and policy debates have become more polarized. Commentators and politicians seem to have moved to more extreme positions over time so that bipartisanship and compromise are all but impossible. As for rational, honest and fact-based debate about policies like taxes, …
Meso powers and causal mechanisms
I've argued in earlier posts for several ideas: Meso-level social structures have causal powers. Meso-level social structures must have microfoundations. Causal relations are carried out by causal mechanisms. Are these claims consistent with each other? An earlier post argues for the consistency of (1) and (2). Here I will address the relation between (1) and (3): what …
Thinking poverty in the inner city
I find the question of how other people think to be one of the most interesting angles we can raise about the social world. By "thinking" I mean breaking down the world of experience into useful categories, reasoning about cause and effect among these items, and organizing one's activities around how he/she understands the world. …
Organizational failure as a meso cause
A recurring issue in the past few months here has been the validity of meso-level causal explanations of social phenomena. It is self-evident that we attribute causal powers to meso entities in ordinary interactions with the social world. We assent to statements like these; they make sense to us. Reorganization of the city's service departments …
How things work
Social scientists have a set of abstract goals in approaching their work. They want to formulate specific research questions about limited aspects of the social world and then arrive at empirical and explanatory insights into those matters. They look for the evidence of social structures and systems, regularities of social behavior in populations and groups, …
Sociologists on race
It is apparent that society in the United States is racialized in deep ways that greatly disadvantage the African-American population in the country, from health to longevity to education level to income and wealth levels. The disparities in all these areas of life are well documented (for example, here). Moreover, they seem to be more durable …
How much inequality?
How much inequality is too much? Answers range from Gracchus Babeuf (all inequalities are unjust) to Ayn Rand (there is no moral limit on the extent of inequalities a society can embody). Is there any reasoned basis for answering the question? What kinds of criteria might we use to try to answer this kind of …
Ostrom’s central idea
Elinor Ostrom was a very important contributor to the theory of public rationality and the institutions that underlie cooperation, and she was most deserving of the recognition that accompanied her receipt of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009. Her passing today is a sad loss for the academic world. Her key contributions were included …
Understanding Society 